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Others see Toronto as a success. Why don't we?

A recent study puts Toronto among the top 10 most influential cities in the world. That's a far cry from the way local scholars describe the city.

Toronto is a world-class metropolitan centre, and we are privileged to live and work in one of the world’s most influential cities, writes Murtaza Haider.
(Aaron Harris / CP)

By Murtaza Haider

Tues., Aug. 19, 2014

To its residents it may be just Hogtown, but to urban experts Toronto is one of the 10 most influential cities in the world.

A panel of leading urban scholars compiled a list for Forbes magazine’s website last week, ranking London as the world’s most influential city, followed by New York and Paris. Toronto was tied for 10th.

While urban experts elsewhere see Toronto as a successful and influential city, Canadian experts do not get tired of criticizing the city. It is time to recognize what others have already recognized: Toronto is a world-class metropolitan centre, and we are privileged to live and work in one of the world’s most influential cities.

Two scholars of urbanism, professors Joel Kotkin and Ali Modarres, teamed up with Aaron Renn, a former Accenture analyst, and demographer Wendell Cox to rank 58 metropolitan areas on eight criteria, ranging from foreign direct investment to racial diversity.

Kotkin and the team used a smart ranking system, eschewing the standard set of inadequate measures of a city’s importance, such as population size or per-capita GDP. As Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, and his co-authors have shown, per-capita GDP can be a particularly misleading number when it comes to estimates of well-being.

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Instead, Kotkin and his team wisely used objective metrics that go beyond superficial proxies. They ranked cities on eight distinct criteria, which included foreign direct investment (FDI), the concentration of corporate headquarters, particular business niches the cities dominate, air connectivity (ease of travel to other global cities), strength of producer services, financial services, technology and media power, and, perhaps most notably, racial diversity.

The authors recognized Toronto as one of the up-and-coming cities, one that’s likely to improve in future rankings for several reasons, including racial diversity. The authors noted that nearly half of the population in Toronto is foreign-born. Apart from diversity, Toronto also ranked highly in the Global Financial Centers Index and air travel connectivity. For the number of FDI transactions over a five-year period, Toronto outranked both Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, which are tied with Toronto in the overall rankings.

I believe these rankings do not do justice to Toronto, whose greatest strength is not merely its racial diversity, but its unique ability to celebrate, and not just tolerate, diversity in all its manifestations. Consider that the most accomplished high school students in Toronto are not from the richest neighbourhoods. Instead, they are often from average neighbourhoods and belong to visible minority families. It is the city that immigrants, aboriginals, racialized groups and others call their own.

Moreover, whereas London and Paris are ranked at the top, I cannot help but reflect on how minorities in these cities, especially racialized groups, struggle to a degree not seen in Toronto. The eastern parts of London and the suburbs of Paris only recently witnessed some of the worst urban riots resulting from the inequalities between rich and poor. Dubai, though ranked higher than Toronto and home to one of the world’s tallest and most luxurious buildings, is also notorious for several slums packed with immigrant workers.

Toronto does not have suburban slums overflowing with immigrants. Instead, the city’s suburbs are booming, healthy and rich in diversity. Yet this is not what our local urban gurus want to celebrate or even recognize. Instead, they routinely complain about the commute times or the city’s infamous mayor.

It is true that Toronto and its suburbs could be even better and more environmentally sustainable. However, in haste to berate the city, let us not forget to celebrate its accomplishments and excellence. Others see Toronto as a success. So should we.

Murtaza Haider is a professor of management at Ryerson University. He is currently working on a book on data science and analytics, which will be available in spring 2015.

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